Leroy Hood gave a talk here today and stated that the largest
human conting., by a factor of 10, is the Human Beta T-Cell Receptor
locus he has been studying: It is 685 kB, with 48 out of 65 apparently
functional "genes", the remainder being pseudogenes. Since Alu
sequences are present on average 1/5000 bp, you should be able to
find around 135 Alu repeats in his sequence. Hood is studying the
ways in which this contig. provides analytical information concerning
gene function; he is apparently trying to develop theories of how genes
might be demarcated using bioinformatic algorithims, rather than
exon trapping methods.
Bert Gold, Ph.D.
University of California, San Francisco
School of Medicine
Program in Medical Genetics